after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US. 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕. 𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.

“When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” - Leonard Matlovich

New music Friday - courtesy of DJ PacKRat 😅🐭✨🎶 Since my sabbatical, I've been dabbling in mixing various styles of house music and adjacent - and my debut set is posted! soundcloud.com/packratpgh/f...

Beach combing in the Anthropocene: a provider of art materials?

Pleased to share new work tinkering with and testing the concept of the holobiont @isme-microbes.bsky.social "Experimental evolution of a mammalian holobiont: bank voles selected for herbivorous capability evolved distinct and robust gut bacterial communities" 🌾🐭🦠 academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

Our night blooming cereus is ready to go tonight!

"The dynamic gut" is a hugely flexible organ and environment! In this paper, we provide an updated review on how animals modulate this organ to meet energy and nutritional demands, with implications for the microbiome journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

New ink to share 😅 Diogenes the Cynic, who rejected cultural conventions and embraced the ways of the natural world - especially dogs 🐶 Often depicted with a lantern during the light of day, searching for an “honest man” - a statement on the rarity of authenticity amid society’s hypocrisy 🕯️

How consistent are dietary effects on gut physiology and the microbiome? In a pair of papers ⬇️, we show that 3 different rodent species have distinct responses to dietary protein and fiber. Clearly, we still have a long way to go in understanding host-microbe interactions across species!

Congrats to Dr. Denise Dearing on being awarded the Utah Governor's Medal for Science for her collection of work on the ecology and evolution of mammalian toxin tolerance!! 🐭🌿⚠️☠️

If you build it 🌳🏡 They will come 🐿️

Using museum specimens for microbiome analyses? We tested it out - and it seems these samples could be an untapped resource for understanding host-microbe interactions! ⬇️

Delivered a symposium talk met with many good questions and feedback, but one comment is replaying: “It’s amazing how many questions your work opens while not answering any.” We went back and forth on the importance of both mechanisms and emergent outcomes.. but not sure we came to an agreement 🫠

Malicious compliance. Utah bans the flying of pride and non-offical flags, Salt Lake City moves to make these alternate versions of their official flag official.

A bright day, with two new amazing PhDs launching into the world! 🎓🐭🧬🦠 Congrats to @karenyperalta.bsky.social and @zoomingbio.bsky.social 🎉

STEAM Saturday outreach 🧬 We taught 5th graders about urban adaptations. And I’m in love with the new animals they made - adapted to the bridges, rivers, and potholes of Pittsburgh!

The @pghglasscenter.bsky.social has an amazing exhibit - Glass Lifeforms, an international competition of biological glass artwork Inspired by Rudolf and Leopold Blaschka’s 19th century glass biological models made for Harvard All entries here: glasslifeform.org/p/38/2025-Ex...

The talent and resulting artwork from these high school students is amazing! 🤩 Thanks to @mothpotato.bsky.social and @americanbeetles.bsky.social for this great sci-art outreach opportunity

Today’s STEAM Saturday outreach event focused on adaptations in animal color and I’m in love with the coffee filter beetles our 5th graders made 🐞🪲😍

Look what arrived in the mail today! ✨📘 Excited to dig into the perspective of @ambikamath.bsky.social and Melina Packer to learn about how our understanding of animal behavior has been shaped by our own human lens and approaches

I have my sign ready for tomorrow! 🪧🌿🧪 #StandUpForScience

There is an amazing inter-city Rustbelt Queer community. I’m in absolute disbelief of this news of our Buffalo NY family.. These two will always serve as inspirations of Queer Joy 💫🌈 www.wbfo.org/2025-03-05/p...

It was a big week in the lab, with two PhD defenses! Congrats to two new Doctors! Dr. Karen Peralta Martinez and Dr. Elizabeth Rudzki @karenyperalta.bsky.social @zoomingbio.bsky.social ✨🧬🏛️🧐🎉

Fellow Mammalogists. As many of you are aware, science is in a state of turmoil in the United States. Recent efforts to drastically reduce government workforces and research funding for science will lead to many adverse consequences for Earth’s remaining natural ecosystems.

I’m excited to share this innovative new work from a recent Kohl Lab meeting. 🎨

In low moments, I remind myself and/or my partners that our resistance will sometimes be in the form of just *being our authentic selves*. We are the Queer folks living thru this time. In that way - we spent the weekend in Colombia 🇨🇴 at a binational gay wedding 🏳️‍🌈 and it was beautiful ✨💖

We’ve seen periods of darkness before. But it’s the resolution to keep yourself shining brightly through that darkness which keeps the long arc of progress moving forward ✨

Excited to share this newly published work by graduate student @karenyperalta.bsky.social ! 🐿️💩🧫🦠🧬 Reviving diversity: cryoprotectants and culturing methods enhance recovery of mammalian gut microbes from field samples academic.oup.com/jmammal/adva...

DID YOU KNOW the amazing @napaaqtuk.bsky.social teaches an amazing class about historically excluded and underrepresented scientists AND MAYBE YOU CAN TOO because she wrote an amazing paper about it? #amazing Highly recommend you check it out: doi.org/10.1002/jcp....

long overdue, but I finally deleted and deactivated my tw*tter account. #SayNoToFascism

Until our paths cross again 🫡 ✨❄️🐥👞

Me in December of last year: this upcoming semester will be a great chance to update some of my lecture material! 🤓 👨🏻‍🏫 Me today: This same lecture from 6 years ago works just fine! 😅🫠

Why Do People Have Different Eating Habits? And might the microbiome play a role? Sneha Khedkar reviews the evidence, including some fun conversation about our work with germ-free mice. 🐭 www.the-scientist.com/why-do-peopl...

Hey #SICB2025 - on Monday (1/6), I’ll be having an ‘art show’ at the @sicbjournals.bsky.social booth during coffee breaks Stop by to see these pieces and chat about the benefits of integrating science and art! 🖼️ 🎨 🧬

Making these paintings as gifts for my parents was quite the wandering creative process, but I’m quite happy with how they turned out! Meant to represent backgrounds of familial history and heritage, networks of influence and traits, and my parents and their 4 children (napping Dad for scale)

It was an honor to review this book of wildlife and scientific artwork by Linda Miller Feltner. In addition to being a beautiful collection, it offers helpful tips and creative techniques for budding artists 🖼️ 🌾 🐿️ Check out my review on the @sicbjournals.bsky.social blog

show us your office mug shot ☕️ #friday

I identify as Queer - a term I’m still trying to define for myself. 🏳️‍🌈✨ But definitions from others have helped me:

I’ve been wanting to introduce myself as a Queer and poly scientist. 🏳️‍🌈✨ I’ve been in a polyamorous throuple with 2 amazing partners for 5+ years We compliment each other in different ways at different times. I love having a dynamic and active family, with an extended Queer family

Coming soon to J. of Mammalogy!! "Reviving diversity: cryoprotectants and culturing methods enhance recovery of mammalian gut microbes from field samples" 🐿️🦠🎉 Presents an immense amount of culturing and sequencing work by @karenyperalta.bsky.social to optimize methods for the #microbiome field

Hi everyone, I tried assembling a Microbiome & friends starter pack. 🦠🧫🔬 Still learning to use bluesky and might have missed you, let me know if you would like to be included. go.bsky.app/Fq36egy

Broader Impacts in action! ⚡️ Today, we had students from a rural charter school specializing in the Visual Arts ( 🎨 ✍️ 🖼️ 📸 ) visit the Invertebrate Zoology collections at Carnegie Museum. They’ll now work to create scientifically accurate and informative artwork!

loving this leaf that wanted a chance to show all its true colors this fall season. 🍃🍁🍂✨

I’ve certainly gone thru developmental stages in my own conceptual understanding of the “holobiont” - and so I’m thrilled to be a part of this network trying to define and wrangle this new area. 🤓 🦠 🧫 ✨ The disciplinary matrix of holobiont biology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

tranquil tuesday art dump ✨ been gettin' abstract and geometric #WorkLifeBalance #Sabbatical #ExploringScienceAndArt

tranquil tuesday art dump ✨ #WorkLifeBalance #Sabbatical #ExploringScienceAndArt

tranquil tuesday art dump ✨ #WorkLifeBalance #Sabbatical #ExploringScienceAndArt

Happening now! www.doorcountylibrary.org/event.html

◀︎◀︎◀︎ bundled art drop ▷▷▷

✢ art drop ✢